Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Today I am rush-writing about the word cellar which I had cause to think of yesterday because our cellar is a graveyard for all kinds of things, including vacuum cleaners that don't work anymore. I'm not sure why we don't just throw them away, other than the fact that I feel guilty about throwing machines away because I'm convinced one day they'll rise up like zombies and COME GET ME because of the adversarial relationship machines and I have had my whole life. So at least I can let them RIP in my nice cool basement as a gesture of good will.

But that's not the point.

The point is that I thought about all those dead vacuum cleaners in the cellar because yesterday one of my neighbors--a young man who's working as a vacuum cleaner salesman--came over to the house to give me a demo. I said yes to be nice. I don't need a new vacuum and also I had just vacuumed earlier in the morning with my fancypants Oreck, so I was feeling all smug and clean AND SASSY the way you do when you've had a successful session of vacuuming the back room.

Anyway. My neighbor came in with all kinds of attachments and so forth and this thing looked so complicated I thought he and I could crawl inside of it and FLY TO THE MOON. Hopefully with George Clooney. After putting the thing together he (my neighbor, not GC) proceeded to run the vacuum over my carpet and then take out filters to show me how dirty, in fact, my carpet still was.

And The People it was dirty. Apparently I have a whole continent of microscopic dirt people living in my rug, eating traditional dirt people dishes and singing dirt people folk songs. Again. Who knew?

It does strike me that this is dangerous territory for a salesperson to navigate. Yes. My carpet could probably use a BIGGER BETTER STRONGER vacuum cleaner. But how does it feel to be exposed as a slob? Who won't be flying to the moon with George Clooney any time soon?

I just had a flashback of the vacuum cleaner salesperson who told my husband he would shampoo the stairs...our stairs are horrible and the temptation was too much. He was here for 3 hours. 3 hours, excruciating hours. Half way through I wanted to scream into a pillow. Until he told us how much the vacuum was. $3400 for a vacuum. I am not in the business of buying appliances that should outlive me. They left, I stopped breathing into a bag and I made a vow never to be nice again

This is basically my worst nightmare. I mean, I pretty much know that I am a slob and also that my house is dog hair city and so forth and so on. But some guy demo-ing these facts to me? No thank you. You were nice to be nice to your neighbor, but I am not that nice and therefore, I will never.

A graveyard of broken-down vacuums is what is known to my ten-year-old as a "wonderland." I can send Jack over to your house and I promise he will not make you feel bad about your Oreck or your housekeeping skills.